Tycoon's Forbidden Cinderella. Melanie Milburne

You actually smiled.’

      His smile became lopsided, making his eyes gleam in a way she had never witnessed before. Then his gaze went to her mouth as if pulled there by a force he had no control over. She could feel the weight of his eyes on her mouth. She was as close to him as she had been to any man. Closer. Closer than she had been to him at the last wedding reception. Her entire body tingled as if tuning in to a new radar signal. Her flesh contracting, all her nerves on high alert. She could feel the gentle pressure from each of his fingers against her arms, warm and sensual.

      His fingers tensed for a moment, but then he dragged his gaze away from her mouth and unwrapped her arms from his waist as if she had scorched him. ‘I’ll take care of the spider. Wait in the kitchen.’

      Audrey sucked in her lower lip. ‘You’re not going to kill it...are you?’

      ‘That was the general idea,’ he said. ‘What else do you want me to do? Take it home with me and handfeed it flies?’

      She stole a glance at the spider and fought back a shudder. ‘It’s probably got babies. It seems cruel to kill it.’

      He shook his head as if he was having a bad dream. ‘Okay. So I humanely remove the spider.’ He picked up an old greetings card off the bookshelf and a glass tumbler from the drinks cabinet. He glanced at her. ‘You sure you want to watch?’

      Audrey rubbed at the creepy-crawly sensation running along her arms. ‘It’ll be good for me. Exposure therapy.’

      ‘Ri-i-ight.’ Lucien shrugged and approached the spider with the glass and the card.

      Audrey covered her face with her hands but then peeped through the gaps in her splayed fingers. There was only so much exposure she would deal with at any one time.

      Lucien slipped the card beneath the spider and then placed the glass over it. ‘Voila. One captured spider. Alive.’ He walked to the front door of the cottage and then, dashing through the pelting rain, placed the spider under the shelter of the garden shed a small distance away.

      He came back, sidestepping puddles and keeping his head down against the driving rain. Audrey grabbed a towel from the downstairs bathroom and handed it to him. He rubbed it roughly over his hair.

      She was insanely jealous of the towel. She had towel envy. Who knew such a thing existed? She wanted to run her fingers through that thick, dark, damp hair. She wanted to run her hands across his scalp and pull his head down so his mouth could cover hers. She wanted to see if his firm mouth would soften against hers or grow hard and insistent with passion.

      She wanted. Wanted. Wanted the one thing she wasn’t supposed to want.

      Lucien scrunched up the towel in one hand and pushed back his hair with the other. ‘This storm looks like it’s not going to end anytime soon.’

      Just like the storm of need in her body.

      What was it about Lucien that made her feel so turned on? No other man triggered this crazy out-of-character reaction in her. She didn’t fantasise about other men. She didn’t stare at them and wonder what it would be like to kiss them. She didn’t ache to feel their hands on her body. But Lucien Fox had always made her feel this way. It was the bane of her life that he was the only man she was attracted to. She couldn’t walk past him without wanting to touch him. She couldn’t be in the same room—the same country—without wanting him.

      What was wrong with her?

      She didn’t even like him as a person. He was too formal and stiff. He rarely smiled. He thought she was silly and irresponsible like her mother. Not that her two tipsy episodes had helped in that regard, but still. She had always hated her mother’s weddings ever since she’d gone to the first one as a four-year-old.

      By the time Sibella married Lucien’s father for the first time, Audrey was eighteen. A couple of glasses of champagne—well, it might have been three or four, but she couldn’t remember—had helped her cope reasonably well with the torture of watching her mother marry yet another unsuitable man. Audrey would be the one to pick up the pieces when it all came to a messy and excruciatingly public end.

      Why couldn’t she get through a simple wedding reception or two or three without lusting over Lucien?

      Another boom of thunder sounded so close by it made the whole cottage shudder. Audrey winced. ‘Gosh. That was close.’

      Lucien looked down at her. ‘You’re not scared of storms?’

      ‘No. I love them. I particularly love watching them down here, coming across the fields.’

      He twitched one of the curtains aside. ‘Where did you park your car? I didn’t see it when I drove in.’

      ‘Under the biggest oak tree,’ Audrey said. ‘I didn’t want it to be easy to see in case the press followed me.’

      ‘Did you see anyone following you?’

      ‘No, but there were recent tyre tracks on the driveway—I thought they were Mum and Harlan’s.’

      ‘The caretaker’s, perhaps?’

      Audrey lifted her eyebrows. ‘Does this place look like it’s been taken care of recently?’

      ‘Good point.’

      Another flash of lightning split the sky, closely followed by a boom of thunder and then the unmistakable sound of a tree crashing down and limbs and branches splintering on metal.

      ‘Which tree did you say you parked under?’ Lucien asked.

      Audrey’s stomach lurched like a limousine on loose gravel. ‘No. No. No. Noooooo!’